Hondurans Ride Winds of Change Blown In by Mitch

"A lot of businesses are expanding here now, but the area is still rural and quiet, so it's great for children," said Javier Guillen, 31, an electrical engineer at a melon-packing plant who lives with his wife and young son in a $20,000 starter house and spends weekends trimming his flower bed. "We have a good life. Our son is in first grade, but already he has bilingual classes. Since Mitch, people are really lifting themselves up."

Still, there is a startling incongruity between these trappings of new wealth and the humble lot of the average Cholutecan. A Wendy's burger costs 80 lempiras, which is roughly the daily minimum wage. Many workers here earn less than that because so many jobs are seasonal and vulnerable to the vagaries of weather and export prices.

Choluteca's fortunes still depend partly on foreign income, both legal and illegal. Wedged between El Salvador and Nicaragua, the region is ideally situated for the smuggling of people and drugs, and officials from four federal police agencies stop all traffic on the highway. People here also complain that money from many post-hurricane aid projects found its way into influential pockets instead of benefiting the victims.

For those with neither schooling nor connections, the tidal wave of change seems remote and inaccessible, and the idea of lunching at Pizza Hut, let alone buying a house, remains an impossible dream. Ezekial Gomez, 44, repairs motors in his front yard and rides his bicycle miles every day in search of small jobs.

"What has any of this got to do with me?" Gomez demanded bitterly, when asked about Choluteca's business boom. "Nothing has changed here since the hurricane; the people in power still get all the benefits and the poor get nothing. I can't even afford to buy a car. What good does it do if the Americans or Chinese come here and build things? They might have good intentions, but they don't even pay enough for three meals a day."

In fact, the ambitious plan for the new free-trade zone -- nicknamed Zip Choluteca -- rests on a controversial low-wage pact, made in the spring among the project's developers, the Honduran government and national labor unions. In return for luring investors to an untested and undeveloped region, the agreement guarantees them a minimum profit by keeping wages below the legal daily minimum for five to 10 years.

Juan Carlos Diaz, a local rancher's son and senior manager for Williams's development company, said the wage deal was a crucial element in making the proposal financially feasible. An energetic booster of Choluteca's development, Diaz drove a visitor last week across the vast idle fields where thousands of prize Holsteins once grazed, sketching the future with his hands. If all goes according to plan, he said, Choluteca will soon be undergoing a real economic transformation.

"Over there we will have the first of 86 hangars with textile operations. . . . Over here will be a four-lane boulevard through the city. . . . Here is where the shops and schools will go," he gushed between jolts and jounces. Occasionally Diaz paused to reflect on the older, slower times, when his grandfather knew the name of every cow. "Those days are gone forever," he said matter-of-factly. "If you come back in a year, you won't recognize anything."